


Tuesday Afternoon, With Mushrooms

by Omorka



Category: Eureka
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Jo head back to the sheriff's office to recover from a typical Tuesday afternoon emergency in Eureka.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tuesday Afternoon, With Mushrooms

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime between "Duck, Duck, Goose" and "Family Reunion;" no major spoilers.

"Well, that definitely could have been worse," grumbled Deputy Lupo as she pushed open the door to the sheriff's office. Traces of light blue dust puffed from the left side of her uniform as she set the ion-based plasma cannon gently on her desk and snapped open her firearm cleaning kit.

"How, exactly, could it have been worse? Without fatalities, I mean," growled Sheriff Carter. Like the plasma cannon and Jo's left sleeve, Carter was covered with crumbly blue dust from head to mid-knee. He headed towards his desk, hesitated, wheeled towards the bathroom, walked two steps, reconsidered again, and turned towards the closet instead.

"I was mostly thinking that there could easily have been fatalities. As it stands, there are, what, two injuries -"

"One of which was Fargo, _again_, and that means another week of griping about how I can't do my job - "

" - and one of whom was Seth, who was responsible for the mess and thus can't exactly gripe about it," finished Jo. "And a whole lot of property damage, but almost all confined to Seth's property and the Global trailer lab he had parked in front of it."

"Well, that and your truck." Jack finished rummaging in the closet and headed back towards the bathroom, clutching a spare uniform. He glanced back at the soft blue tracks he was leaving all over the floor, sighed, reached into the closet again to grab a broom, and made a beeline for the sink, closing the door behind him.

Jo waited for the water to stop running. "Henry said it wasn't a problem, that he'd have it back tomorrow," she shouted from her desk in the direction of the door.

"And it's probably not a bad idea to have you both taken home tonight by Global's drivers," added Dr. Blake as she stepped into the office. She was lightly dusted in the same blue powder; it was sprinkled throughout her hair and over her shoulders. "I'll make sure to have them pick you up in the morning; you're going to need a ride anyway," she continued as Jo tried to protest.

Carter stuck his head out of the bathroom doorway. "I don't have a problem taking Jo home and then picking her up tomorrow morning. It's not even that far out of my way." From the look on his face, Jo suspected he was imagining yet another electric car with a roof too low for him to climb in and out easily.

Allison shook her head. "I sent samples of both spore types back to GD, and while the researchers in Section Two said that after being administered the antidote, there shouldn't be any serious effects, re-exposure - such as you might get by, say, cleaning a gun or removing a uniform coated in the spores - might cause minor sedative or illusion effects."

"How minor are we talking about?" Jo and Jack both chorused. Jo looked skeptical; from the tone of his voice through the doorway, Allison guessed that Carter was giving his soiled uniform the is-it-going-to-jump-at-me look.

Dr. Blake tried to sound reassuring. "It shouldn't be a problem, but there's a non-trivial possibility that you might suffer from some minor drowsiness, from the soporific spores, or some optical illusions, from the hallucinogenic spores."

Jack emerged from the bathroom, his hair sopping wet and plastered back like a five-year-old with a cowlick. He was wearing the clean uniform, and barefoot. "Um, okay. So, the yellow spores were the bad-acid-trip ones, right? We don't have to worry about that, unless -" He broke off to pull on one sock, then stepped back to peer through the door at the dirty shirt and pants.

Allison shook her head. "No, I don't think any of us got hit by the hallucinogenic spore jet. But if there's a significant chance that you might be nodding off - either of you - I don't want you driving. There'll be a car at five for you, Deputy Lupo, and then another one at six-thirty, Carter." Jack gave her a raised eyebrow. She glanced down at her own suit. "And my driver's waiting outside. Don't worry, the doctor is taking her own advice, too." She smiled at Jack - a brief, genuine flash - and then stepped out the door.

"I feel fine," grumbled Jo, as she finished wiping down the plasma cannon, checked it over, and set it firmly but gently back in its proper slot on the gun rack. "I'd worry more about the ones who got the yellow jet to the face."

"Well, Fargo and Seth weren't in any shape to drive anywhere, anyway," observed Carter as he started a pot of coffee, still not wearing his shoes. "And I'm willing to bet that Stark went back to Global in the same truck as the spore samples. I'm still surprised he came out of that scuffle without a scratch."

"With Seth? Please," said Jo, tapping her fingers on the desk. "Stark could take him in a fight not only tripping out of his gourd but with one hand behind his back."

Carter made a mental note not to ask Jo if she'd ever actually fought Stark hand-to-hand; he suspected that he didn't want to know the answer. "What sort of crazed genius grows giant exploding mind-altering-dust-spewing mushrooms in a trailer in his front yard, anyway? Don't answer that," he stopped Jo as she rolled her eyes, "I know. But four-foot walking plants that blow up when something heavy hits them? And what's his obsession with mind-altering substances, anyway? Should we be raiding his house for more common, um, brain-messing-with plants?"

Jo grinned. "If you mean marijuana, then no - Sheriff Cobb busted him for that twice, once growing the normal type and once when he was grafting it to tomato plants. The fruit would get you high if you ate them raw. Vince accidentally blissed out half of Main Street when he sliced them into the Fourth of July tossed salad. Seth never tried it again after that; I kept a personal eye on him for the next six months."

"Oh, great," moaned Carter, dropping into his chair. His face quirked up, eyebrows lowered. "Um, do you think we should check up on Fargo? Now that Beverly's not in town, I'm not sure who to suggest he see, but when he got hit by the yellow powder and was screaming 'No, Dad, don't' - doesn't that suggest some, ah, serious psychological issues to you?"

"Possibly," said Jo, with her face carefully blank, "but I suspect he was having the same zombie hallucination that Stark and Seth were, just more - personalized."

Jack's eyes crinkled, then widened. "Fargo's dad's dead?" Jo nodded. "Oh." She raised her eyebrows and nodded again. Jack thought a minute, and then looked at the desk, as if he were thinking of someone very far away. Then he looked up at his deputy, who was carefully folding and tucking her polishing cloth and her tools back into the gun cleaning kit. "I guess it's a good thing neither of us was on that side of the giant exploding mind-altering plant," he ventured, with a half-hearted grin.

"Yes," Jo said simply, snapping the kit shut. For a long minute, neither of them spoke.

Finally, Jack sighed and leaned forward onto the desk. "Jo, does it seem more - like it's more dangerous than normal, to you?" he asked, his voice lower than before.

Lupo poked at a couple of keys on her computer while she thought about that for a minute. "You mean today, or this week, or . . . ?" she finally asked, shrugging, spreading her hands in front of her.

Jack looked aside, then at his feet, and in an even lower voice said "Since I've been here, and this last month in particular."

Jo scowled. "Well, since I started working here, there have been quiet periods and then several times when lots of stuff has all happened pretty much at once. This last month has been busier than average, but not as busy as I've ever seen. There was one month when Sheriff Cobb and I were having to pull out the Really Big Guns several times a week." She shuddered; Carter tried not to think about what would be big and bad enough to make Lupo shudder at the thought of using massive firepower. "And since you've been here -" she stopped, tapped at her desk calendar, and then started again - "Yeah, it's been busier than normal, but not by a huge amount." She paused, looking suspicious again. "Why?"

Carter shrugged. "Nothing big. I was just - I mean you mentioned Sheriff Cobb, and I - you know, I was just thinking that -" Jack clasped his hands, unclasped them, rubbed the back of his neck, and waved vaguely in the direction of the door.

" - That you're endangering the town through your inexperience somehow?" asked Jo.

"No, no, that's not what I mean. Well, um, yes. That's exactly what I was worrying about, actually." Jack ran a hand through his still-damp hair and looked at the floor again.

Jo shook her head. "If you'd asked me back in the first couple of months you were here, I might have said yes. You weren't Sheriff Cobb, and you didn't have the instincts he'd built about this town. You still don't. But you also aren't just used to things the way he was, either, and that means you're more observant than he might be sometimes. And you've learned enough about the town that I think now you're as good as anyone could have expected." Jo looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if her shoes were hurting. "I . . . I don't think you're worse than Sheriff Cobb, or that Eureka is any less safe with you in that uniform."

She swallowed. Then she looked directly at him. "Except, of course, that Sheriff Cobb would never have taken his shoes off in the office. We might all be in danger just from the smell." She grinned and ducked behind the desk as Carter threw the whiffle ball he kept on his desk at her head, laughing.

Carter was just about to say something when a horn sounded from outside. Jo glanced at her watch. "That would be my five o'clock ride," she announced, gathering a folder and her keys from her desk. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. Hopefully Henry will call and tell me about the vehicle before you get here, and I can just have the GD driver drop me off at his garage."

Jack nodded, and added "And if it's not ready by then, we'll just go over in my car when he calls about it.. See ya." He waved, trying not to look relieved and failing.

He was prodding his shoes with the end of the broom handle when Jo poked her head back in. "Forget something?"

"No," she grinned, "I just wanted to tell you that they're the Smart cars, and the driver's an A.I. Mine's some sort of military program, and it said that they're sending S.A.R.A.H for you again." She waved jauntily and spun back out the door as Carter leaned against the door frame and groaned.


End file.
